With the rise in access to personal computers and computer networks, collaborative projects in which groups of individuals participate in the creation and/or modification of projects over a digital network have become increasingly popular. Currently, the vast majority of these activities occur in the corporate environment where both large and small teams of individuals collaborate on myriad business documents as well as graphic presentations, spreadsheets and the like. Corporate participants can collaborate by contributing or modifying content or commenting on existing or newly contributed content. It is typically left to the discretion of appointed members of the workgroup to determine which contributions and comments are finally accepted. This system can be highly efficient in small workgroups, but as the size of the group grows, it becomes evident that a system is needed in which the group can self-select the best content via the application of democratic principles in an automated system.
Other network-based systems are known that enable a group of participants to enter a “virtual meeting space” where real-time voice and video communication may take place and multi-media interactive presentations made. Some of these systems feature voting mechanisms where the meeting participants can be instantaneously polled and the results immediately known. However, these systems contain no facilities for utilizing the voting features in the automatic creation of a document one segment at a time.
Still other systems accessible through the world wide web are known, which employ democratic principles in the selection of content segments. Their primary use involves the ranking of comments posted to a network message board, so that the popularity of a particular comment, and/or the individual posting that comment, based on the frequency with which it has been accessed by others, will determine its ranking and position in a list of comments. While this method is extremely useful in prioritizing a vast web of discussion threads, its design does not accommodate the segment-by-segment creation of a structured document in which the sequence of each piece is vital to the coherence of the whole.
Collaborative story-telling is an activity as old as human kind. In a typical scenario, a group of individuals sit in a circle and someone starts off a story with a sentence, e.g. “On a dark and stormy night . . . ” The story then proceeds from person to person around the circle with each participant contributing a new sentence or section to the story.
A current obstacle to collaborative story-telling is one of scale. As the number of participants increases, it becomes more difficult to administer a fair election with onerous review procedures and long lag times. Simply put, the activity becomes unproductive.
No current mechanism or system exists for multiple participants to collaborate in the creation of new works on a large scale. All they can do is electronically publish their creative work, then wait for haphazard comments from their peers. This vastly decreases the productivity of any collaboration that might occur. Additionally, it sets a high barrier for participating since it is necessary to publish an entire work (e.g., story or episode).
For example, in the movie industry, the high barrier of having to complete an entire screenplay alienates the vast majority of the public that does not have the time or training to author an entire screenplay. Moreover, the screenplays that are selected to be produced into actual films are inevitably chosen by an elite minority. This minority is too often swayed by the track record of the screenplay author and who the author knows in the business. This makes it exceedingly difficult for unknown screenwriting talent, or writing talent in any creative field, including literature and television, to be discovered.
The need for a collaborative environment that is easy to use and scaleable exists in other areas. For example, in educational environments, teachers and professors of creative writing often seek activities through which a group of students can learn through collaboration. Utilizing the internet, educators teach classes that may contain thousands of students. In these environments, developing activities which yield productive collaboration and effective learning through the interaction of the students is a growing challenge.
To confront these varied challenges, a new method and a system for collaboratively creating documents are needed which enable a group of participants to each contribute a small portion of a collaborative work, one segment at a time. In the case of a collaborative story or screenplay, individuals could contribute by writing just a few pages or less rather than the entire screenplay or story.
A method and a system are also needed to collectively elect by means of a voting process the individual segments that comprise the collaborative work. The contributor of each elected segment should have the opportunity to be recognized and commended by the group.
A further need exists for a system that allows an unlimited number of participants to vote and contribute from a wide-array of devices capable of accessing a network including, personal computers and PDAs.
A still further need exists for a system that accommodates a broad range of media formats, including text, images, audio, and video. Such a system should include software and hardware that automate routine functions to minimize administration requirements.